The present invention generally relates to a secure postage dispensing system and, in particular, relates to one such system including means for receiving and storing mailing information from a user and means for providing that user with a unique encrypted number for each mail piece designated in the mailing information.
Currently, there are four generally accepted systems for accounting for postage to be mailed with a postal delivery service, such as, for example, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). These four can generally be designated as stamps, meters, permit mail and manifest mail.
Stamps, as well known, do not lend themselves to automated application in high volume environments. In particular, the application of stamps is generally restricted to low volume mailers and are not considered a feasible system for any form of high volume mailing.
Meters are well adapted to higher volume environments, however, meters are generally mechanical in nature and therefore pose some reliability problems. In addition, postage must be loaded into the meters in advance of the actual use thereof, thus accurate work estimates must be made to ensure that the meter does not run out of funds during a particular mail run. Further, postage meters, by law, must be rented or leased and, as such, represent an ongoing cost to a customer that cannot be avoided. Still further, with respect to meter, large mail runs can occasionally be made with the meter inadvertently set to the wrong value. Such an error usually requires that the entire mail run be reprocessed.
Permit mail systems are currently available for those mailers that mail large volumes of mailpieces of the same weight. In such a system, the permittee applies a permit indicia to each mail piece, this indicia may also be preprinted, and provides a summary sheet, often referred to as a Form 3602, to the postal service upon delivery of each batch of mail to be mailed under the permit. While this system is appropriate for numerous applications, many typical mailing applications, such as, for example, billing and some types of advertising, do not meet the identical weight requirement.
A manifest mail system resolves most of the difficulties found in permit mail systems. However, a manifest mail system introduces other difficulties, at least from the viewpoint of the mail delivery service. For example, one difficulty is that since the markings on the mail piece are not applied by a secure device, such as a meter, it is considered much easier for a determined party to produce apparently valid mail in a fraudulent fashion. Thus, to augment inspection procedures, additional documentation must be provided to maintain the integrity of a manifest mail system. Partly as a result of this documentation, traditional manifested mail pieces cannot be verified subsequent to the time it has been separated from the rest of the mail batch unless the documentation that accompanies the mail specifies each and every detail of every mail piece and, simultaneously, is available to anyone wishing to verify any suspected mail piece. The difficulty so introduced lies in the fact that, by using a manifest mail system, a high volume mailer may mail many thousands of mail pieces in a single batch.
A further difficulty with manifest mail lies in the question as to whether or not the documentation, or manifest, used to validate each submitted mail batch has been properly prepared. As well known, any application program operating on an unsecure computer, for example, on the mainframe computer of the mailer, is, almost by definition, subject to tampering, alteration or other compromise. Such tampering could be made very difficult to detect but might, nonetheless, operate to print documentation for a mail batch that shows a lesser amount of postage due than is actually, in fact, required. To prevent such tampering would require a significant effort on the part of the inspecting authority for each batch of mail submitted. For example, if the documentation or manifest consists of a list of each mail piece and the postage due for that piece, the inspector would, at least, have to total the values for each and every mail piece to verify that the total presented in the documentation is correct.
In presorted manifest mail, there is the additional difficulty of ensuring the application of the exact amount of postage onto the mail piece since the postage required therefor becomes a function of the position of each mail piece in the sorted mail and the characteristics of adjacent pieces. The typical solution implemented is to meter all the mail for the minimum amount, i.e., and thereafter pay the mail delivery service an extra amount for pieces that are subsequently found not to qualify for the presorted discounts. This procedure entails verifying that all of the residuals, i.e., all of the non-qualifying mail, have been accounted and paid for.
Consequently, a postage dispensing system that overcomes the above recited difficulties is highly desirable as such a system relieves the mailer from numerous reruns, lost costs and the requirement for expensive on-site equipment.